A Voter’s Guide to Misogyny and Negative Media Stereotypes About Black Women

Republicans simply can not help themselves. With Vice President Kamala Harris because the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Trump and the GOP are drawing on their reservoir of anti-black hatred and counting on misogyny and negative media stereotypes of black women as an electoral strategy. That’s all they’ve left.

Biden recently left the race, and we have already seen where Republicans are headed with their attacks on Harris and black women on the whole. For example, Republican lawmakers called Harris “DeI Vice President”, “DEI Hiring” and “DEI Candidate.” DEI is the brand new n-word chosen by white nationalists who want to convey that blacks are inferior and unqualified.

Conservative commentators They claim Harris “slept” at the highest, blame her for not having children, and claim she did nothing but “I received a government check for the last 20 years”

Republican Party leaders even warned their members not to accomplish that racist or sexist comments about Harrislimiting his comments to political differences, not personal attacks. Trump then blew the entire thing wide open by questioning Harris’s blackness in a most unlucky appearance on the NABJ convention in Chicago. Trump claimed that Harris, whose father is Jamaican and whose mother is Native American, “always had Indian ancestry” and “only promoted Indian ancestry.”

“I didn’t know she was black until a few years ago when she became black,” Trump said. “Now she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know if she’s Native American or black?”

The racial stereotypes of black women that the Republican Party has used against Harris, which can only worsen, reflect misogyny within the larger society. Apart from the valid criticisms of Harris — including discussions about her policy positions, whether she helps the black community and one other black women running — these attacks reflect what Republicans consider black people, especially black women. This election season, we should always expect all of the stereotypes and prepare accordingly.

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In a rustic where black people were considered lower than human — allow us to recall the yr 1857 decision, when the Supreme Court said black people “have no rights which the white man is bound to respect” — now we have been reduced to dehumanized, racist cartoon characters. Here’s a listing of the various tropes and stereotypes Harris and other black women could also be facing as they struggle to gain advantage in a racist America.

“Sapphire”

One such offensive stereotype is Sapphirea domineering, rude, loudmouthed, aggressive, and indignant black woman, named after Sapphire Stevens from the Nineteen Fifties CBS sitcom “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” The temperamental and effeminate Sapphire has been around because the days of slavery and Jim Crow racial segregation and could be present in media and popular culture. Consider the character of Aunt Esther from the classic television sitcom “Sanford and Son” or reality shows just like the “Real Housewives” franchise. The offensive, racially charged caricature of the black woman with attitude is throughout us, and society accepts the stereotype as truth since the media tells us it’s.

“Mommy”

Another long-standing, proven, and hottest caricature of the black woman is Mommy — a servant, often an enslaved woman, who cares for white people and their children within the Big House. Examples include the now defunct and renamed Aunt Jemima pancake brand — that had a whole restaurant Disneyland complete with a singing black actress dressed for the part and serving pancakes — and the character Hattie McDaniel played within the 1939 film Gone with the Wind.

And the Mammy stereotype continues into the twenty first century. When a chat show host Drew Barrymore told Harris that America needed a vice chairman “to be the ‘Mamala’ of the country” — referring to the nickname Harris’ stepchildren gave her — he gave Mammy. Just as Mammy was expected to cook and clean — not to mention breast-feed white children — Black women are expected to clean up the mess that’s America and save democracy.

“Jezebel”

And while you think it’s bad enough, it gets worse. Jezebel is the image of the seductive, oversexualized, and hypersexualized black woman. Jezebel emerged from objectification of black women and social control over their bodies in the course of the slave trade. White people viewed black women as things, animals, and sexual objects valued for his or her childbearing. White society viewed black women as more promiscuous than white women and less trustworthy victims of rape and sexual assault.

The Jezebel stereotype comes as people within the MAGA world accuse Harris of being “the girl on the side” who “slept on top” in politics, pointing to his former ties with California politicians Willie Brown (born 1969) and TV presenter Montel Williams.

And when the Daily Mail reported that Harris’ great-great-great-great-grandfather was Irish slave owner who owned 121 blacks on a Jamaican plantation, it was not the property some whites thought it was. Many African Americans and Caribbeans have European originThis was largely due to white slave owners raping and impregnating the black female slaves they owned.

“The Queen of Prosperity”

Another toxic stereotype of black women, the Welfare Queen, was perfected by Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. Conservatives conjured up the image of the freeloader and welfare fraudster, the poor black woman within the ghetto who cheated the system and lived lavishly by stealing welfare checks. The Welfare Queen justified the elimination of welfare programs and government spending cuts and attracted racist white people to the Republican Party.

Reagan said it was woman in chicago who “used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 phone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, and welfare benefits.” racist dog whistle demonized the poor and anti-poverty programs, blaming black women and using racist stereotypes Black laziness. And regardless that most low-income individuals are white, the Welfare Queen trope worked. And white nationalists in today’s GOP dare to portray Kamala Harris as a welfare queen because she’s a black woman who spent her profession working in government — or collecting a government check.

“The Tragic Mulatto”

At the top there’s tragic mulatto — a fictional multiracial or mixed-race character from the 1800s and 1900s, and most recently the Marina Thompson character on Shonda Rhimes’ series “The Bridgertons”.” Typically depicted in literature and movies as a light-skinned or white woman who’s half black and half white, the tragic mulatto cannot slot in with either the black world or the white side of town, and is self-loathing, depressed, confused, and suicidal. The tragic mulatto trope encouraged racial distrust inside the black community and between blacks and whites.

Trump and Republicans want to exploit and weaponize Harris’ blackness for political gain, claiming she’s not black because her mother was Indian and her father was Afro-Jamaican — or at the least doesn’t know who she is. Claiming that somebody cannot be black and AAPI (just like the tennis star Naomi Osakaactress Tatiana Ali AND Rui Hachimura (from the LA Lakers) erases hundreds of thousands of individuals around the globe who’re each — Caribbeanin Asia and Black Pacific and next.

These stereotypes punish and hurt black women in so some ways. This misogynoir is a grimy business, and Republicans can not help themselves. It’s not only Kamala Harris, it’s all black women. And Trump and his supporters are telling us who they’re and how they feel about black women.